Garden update! 16 May 2007 11:32 pm
Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,dessert,garden,pictures,salad , trackbackI had hoped to take pictures, but it was dark by the time the camera battery was recharged and I’d gotten anything cool-looking done, so proof of today’s awesome accomplishments will have to wait (although I did update my garden pictures on Flickr to include last week’s adventures in the front yard and at the Urban Farm). What did I do today? Well…
I thoroughly weeded the garlic and carrots (which I also thinned) and random greens. In the process, I harvested a big pile of the spinach I planted in February. It’s not quite as gorgeous as the stuff I brought home from Urban Farm last week, but I am quite sure it will be more delicious as at home I planted seeds instead of transplants and thus had almost two more weeks with which to lavish the plantses with loooove, which as you all know is the source of all true deliciousness. Mmm, deliciousness.
I installed the soaker hose, in the process discovering that it is sadly not quite long enough to reach the newly-transplanted rosebushes as well as all the garden spots I want to irrigate. Dangit. Also, if you want to feel like a real dunce, try installing a soaker hose backwards. Now imagine that you didn’t do it on purpose, and you’ll know what I felt like at around dusk today. Fortunately I could still reach the appropriate end with the regular hose, so it wasn’t a total loss, just a moment of feeling not very smart at all. Then I watered those hard-to-reach-with-the-soaker-hose places by hand, with a watering can.
I transplanted the mystery cucurbit starts! This involved prepping garden bed sites for both kind of seedling (lots of digging and weeding — quack grass is pretty much pure evil), and hoping fervently that I correctly sorted cucumbers from spaghetti squash, because hot diggety do they ever make weird fruit if cross-pollinated.
I started a new compost pile. If I’ve learned anything from Urban Farm, it’s that in theory my old compost pile should never have worked at all, which just goes to show that theory failed to take into account the stupdendously badass earthworms local to my yard. Still, I’m eager to harness the power of friendly microorganisms as well as the charismatic megafauna pictured here:
so I guess that means it’s time to pay extra special loving attention to pile layers and whatnot, and maybe get a thermometer.
I noticed that the tops of my garlic have coiled beautifully, which I believe means it’s time to cut them off and eat sautéed garlic “whistles” — yum!
Finally, and speaking of yum, I ate my very first homegrown strawberry of the season! (Well, actually, I shared it with Peter, who kindly mowed the lawn, which means I’ll have plenty of grass clippings for mulching the garden when I finish raking the yard tomorrow.) Yay!
Since finally coming in from the well-darkened garden, I have been writing this entry and relaxing with my shiny new copy of the special 25th anniversary edition of The Silver Palate Cookbook (a gift from Mom). Oddly enough, I find I am most intrigued by their recipes for salads and desserts — both traditionally Peter’s areas of expertise. All told, it has been a most excellent day.
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TracyFood
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Chiara
